The design of this weapon started in
1930 and a
prototype was ready at the end of the year. On February 13,
1932
the Artillery Committee decided to perform trials with seven pre-production weapons. Same year (October 11)
RVS adopted first in the world specialized aviation cartridges
for ShKAS machinegun: Incendiary, combined armor-piercing/incendiary and
tracers.

To achieve the highest possible rate of fire, the designers used new construction principles: A large proportion
of the powder gases was drained via lateral holes drilled in the barrel and the use of a very strong shock-absorbing
bumper enabled the breech-block to move back and forward with an extremely high speed. Additionally, the cartridges
were fed by a special drum-type mechanism, thus reducing to a minimum the movements of the cartridges within the gun
itself. This led to a rate of fire of 1,800rpm, which was exceptionally high for that time (the best contemporary
foreign constructions achieved no more than 1,100rpm).

At the end of
1932
the variant for synchronized firing through the propeller disc was ready for production and in February
1934
the versions for fixed installation in the wings and for flexible mounting followed. At first there
were different opinions about a weapon with such a high rate of fire. Due to this fact, it was not before
1936
that the final decision was made to install this gun in all modern
Soviet aircraft types.

24k b/w photo of ShKAS (top) and Ultra-ShKAS at the Monino collection
from "Sowjetische Jagdflugzeuge" ("Soviet Fighters") by W. Kopenhagen.

According to official Soviet documents, the following numbers of this gun were available in the years between
1933 and
1940:

At the end of the 1930s the improved Ultra-ShKAS appeared.
Its rate of fire had been further improved. But in the meantime it had become obvious
that rifle-caliber machine guns were becoming increasingly ineffective in aerial combat
and larger calibers would be needed in future. So this
variant was only built in relatively small numbers.